rapido marine

duane.mosley

looking for anyone with experience with Raul at Rapido Marine in Hollywood, Florida? looking to purchase a long block and he sure does have some good prices.

Michael T

Just got off the phone with a friend who used to re-build race engines. Turns out he's out of the country for a while and he sold his company a number of years back. But he said he gave better prices in the winter particularly if guys did not want an exotic build as he could put an apprentice tech on it and oversee him. For exotic builds (race) there were 6 guys who did that all year long and there weren't really any deals on that.

His opinion was that if the shop was doing volume, doing "basic" rebuilds and if it was a family type operation the costs could be kept down. Other than that he said watch out that they aren't using cheap parts that not only won't last as long but might fail outright under load. He said there is only so much you can reduce the price of a build without using cheap parts.

He said look them up, if you can't find them on the internet stay away as even small guys have to be there now (his opinion).

So I did some research on Rapido for you, me being retired and all. They have a B+ rating from the American BBB. There are several Google comments on them. There is an interesting comment from Raul's brother explaining why there is a significant cost difference.

Google: Rapido Marine Engine - anyone used them (archive) Team Talk

If you like what you read I'd call them and ask them outright about their parts selection.

Good luck. BTW I'd be interested in hearing about your final choice.

duane.mosley

thanks michael. i most certainly appreciate you doing so. i was reading different threads for about 30 minutes before making my post and most were saying good things. he is offering a 377 for 1850! kinda hard to believe since most crank kits to convert my 350 are running close to a grand, that's without the machine shop work. i will continue reading, and give  raul a call on tuesday. just wanting to get some feedback from anyone that might have used them from this forum.